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Ramsey middle school students were “locked in place” just before dismissal today after a 14-year-old neighborhood boy told police he was cut with a knife by a burglar he found ransacking his family’s home.

A search of the area by a Bergen County Sheriff’s K9 unit turned up neither a scent nor footprints, however.

“At this time I don’t think there’s any criminal activity or any cause for concern,” Ramsey Police Chief Bryan Gurney told
CLIFFVIEW PILOT
this afternoon.

“It’s a difficult call, but it doesn’t add up,” the chief said.

“The matter remains under investigation,” he said.

The teen called police to the North Central Avenue home, up the block from the Eric Smith Middle School, at 2:50 p.m.

He said he was alone in his room when he heard a noise downstairs, went to investigate and found a man in the kitchen dressed all in black and wearing a ski mask.

The teen told police he grabbed a skillet and hit the intruder, who he said pulled out a small kitchen knife and swung it at him several times, leaving him with superficial cuts on his hands and face.

The boy said the burglar then opened a rear sliding glass door, pushed out the screen and vanished into the woods.

Police from Ramsey, Mahwah, Allendale and the sheriff’s office rushed to the home, where they found the living room trashed — picture frames broken, the Christmas tree knocked to the floor — and some cuts in a doorway.

Nothing was apparently taken, including a laptop and other electronic equipment next to the tree.

“It’s that time of year, so it’s certainly possible,” an officer at the scene told
CLIFFVIEW PILOT
. “But the only footprints in the snow are ours.”

Worried parents collected their children at the Smith School after receiving messages of the lock-in.